It seems that "everyone" hates PowerPoint™! At one time there was even a website dedicated to how poorly presenters use the tool. I'm bucking the trend to tell you that I LOVE PowerPoint™. It's the tool I most use to share my visual messages, organize my thoughts, and convey what I'm thinking.I'm often asked how I do what I do with the tool. I thought I would share 7 ways to use PowerPoint to visualize your thoughts and convey what's in your head so that you, too, might learn to love the tool.And no - I do not have any financial interest in Microsoft or the MS Office Suite. I simply grew up on Wintel (Windows & Intel) computers using MS Office products and have learned how to make them indispensable tools in my business.So here are seven ways to visualize your ideas - your thoughts; what's in your head - with PowerPoint (or similar) presentation software.(Note: I use and reference PowerPoint™ 2010 in this article.)1. Idea Concept SketchUse PowerPoint shapes to sketch your idea. You can draw all kinds of figures and shapes, and add text, directional flow, highlights, and more with arrows and other shapes available in the "Insert Shapes" area. Circles, squares, lines, arrows, and the like can be combined to create drawings that, when grouped together, copied, and pasted as graphics, you can insert into documents, presentations, email and texts or post to social media.2. Idea concept buildSketch a concept, insert clip art or pictures, and use SmartArt to create a foundational visual... the base visual that you will build upon. Then add additional graphic components directly over the foundational visual. Alternatively you can create consecutive slides where you build increased complexity from the foundational slide so that you show how an idea concept develops and progresses layer-by-layer.3. InfographicSearch your favorite web browser for "infographic templates PowerPoint". A couple of free template sites I found for PowerPoint infographics (as of this writing) are Visual.ly and Infogr.am. My favorite templates resource is PresenterMedia.com which is all-PowerPoint-based. It also has a plethora of clipart, animations, and customizable clipart. There's an annual fee for PresenterMedia but it's well worth it if you do a lot of visualizations and create a lot of presentations.The alternative to using templates to create infographics is to create a PowerPoint "slide" however long you want your infographic to be. Do this by using the "Design" and "Page Setup" selections to set the length and width of the page size. Then use shapes, graphics, and colors to create your infographic.4. VideoVideo is a great way to take people on a tour with photos, show the development progression of an idea, inspire, teach, announce something new, or otherwise show sequencing and motion. And video is SEO-friendly for websites.
Create your slides with pictures, text, and whatever other graphic components you want to use to show your idea concept. Add narration and transitions to your slides, setting transition timing to work with your narration as appropriate. Then use the "Save and Send" option at the "File" menu tab and "Create a Video". You can add music as "narration" prior to this stage of the process, or queue music to the video with a video editor after you create the visual video. I've created many videos using PowerPoint without expensive video production software and equipment!5. Vision boardInstead of cutting pictures out of magazines and gluing them to poster board - which is a great activity in itself when you want to do this - find royalty-free photos online, buy pictures through websites that sell them, or do some cutting-and-pasting from online magazines (which you can do by using the "PrtScrn" key on your keyboard, "Paste"ing into PowerPoint, and then cropping only what you want for your vision board). Stack the pictures into one slide. "Bring to Front" and "Send to Back" individual photos to layer them; tilt them different ways for the appearance of pictures askew on poster board. When you have the "vision board" looking the way you want, "Group" everything together and "Save As Picture" onto your hard drive.If you want your digital vision board to be portable so you can carry your vision board with you at all times, upload the graphic you created to your mobile device.6. Composite photosThese are photos with text or other graphics superimposed on the photo. I do this a lot with the quotations I post on social media and put into my newsletters.Import a photo into PowerPoint and expand it as large as you can on a slide. "Insert Shapes" and insert a text box onto the slide over the photo. Type the text you want to superimpose onto the photo and set the text color so that it contrasts nicely with the photo as background. Group the components and you have a composite photo.7. Index / note cardsI organize my thoughts by creating slides in "thumbnail view". I select a slide, type my thoughts, and add any visualizations I want. With PowerPoint in "thumbnail view", I move slides around as if they are index cards as I organize my thoughts. Add / delete slides as appropriate. Then print all slides as 6 or 9 slides/per page to have a printout of the "note cards".Give PowerPoint a second look and see if you can use it as an idea visualization tool. Love it rather than leave it and you just might convey your thoughts and organize your messages more effectively.
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